A fast NAS with class: 5 months with the Synology DS-412+

Last year, when Ars published our two-part DroboFS review (Part 1, Part 2), one of the requests we kept hearing was for a similar in-depth review of other home-oriented network attached storage (NAS) products, particularly those from Synology. A few months ago, I purchased a Synology DS-412+ to replace my DroboFS (which I have since passed on to my parents) and I've been living with it since.

In with the new

Other contenders in the home NAS space include QNAP, NetGear, and Iomega, but I went with Synology chiefly due to their reputation for performance. The DroboFS was the very definition of "easy to use," but after more than a year the slow read and write speeds just became too much. After scouring forums and reviews to find a replacement, I kept coming back to the then-newly released DS-412+.

Synology breaks down its models across several lines, and each device's intended target market can be divined by dissecting the model designation. Units beginning with an "RS" are "RackStation" models, intended to be mounted in standard data center 19-inch racks; "DS" units are "DiskStation" models, which sit on the floor or on a desk rather than in a rack. The first number after the DS or RS is the maximum number of disk drives the device supports (though reaching that number for some models requires an external expansion bay). The next two digits are the year the model entered production, with all models on sale today having either 11, 12, or 13 (yes, a few models now carry a 13—don't ask). The final character indicates anything special about the model—a "+" if it's a business-class unit with extra oomph, a "j" for entry-level models which prioritize affordability over performance, or a "slim" for units which accept 2.5" hard disk drives.

The DS-412+, then, is a four-bay standalone unit, produced in 2012, with an emphasis on performance. It differs from the earlier DS-411 model it's replacing by having a faster CPU (a 2.1GHz Intel Atom D2700 versus a 1.6GHz ARM) and four times the RAM (1GB versus 256MB). The additional RAM and CPU are both useful, not just for providing more horsepower for faster file transfers but also for giving the user more headroom for running applications on the NAS. A nice library of both official and homegrown applications extends the device's functionality, too.

A word on price

I'll go ahead and spoil the ending of this review now: the only thing I truly have to complain about with this NAS is the price. You'll pay at least $650 for it before taxes and shipping, depending on the merchant you buy from—and that's without any disks in it. It wouldn't be at all difficult to part together a much more powerful small form factor white-box server for considerably less money; toss in a few hard disk drives and a free operating system like FreeNAS and you've got yourself a perfectly serviceable storage system.

What you're potentially giving up when going with a home-built device is support, a warranty, ease of use, and—at least in the case of Synology—a healthy software ecosystem. For someone content to be his own sysadmin, the prospect of adding a frankenNAS to the closet in the den isn't necessarily that daunting; in fact, if you're that kind of person, you might have quit reading already and gone back to building your RAID-Z vdevs or whatever it is that you folks do. A huge segment of regular people, though, can't or don't want to deal with home-built servers. Such servers can be a lot like project cars—fast and fun to tinker with, but often cantankerous, time-sucking monsters.

A NAS device like the Synology trades time for additional cost, and it arrives ready to go. There are different models for different prices; if you don't need as much space but still want the interface, you can pick up a two-bay unit instead; if you know that you're going to need a LOT of space, you can go with an eight-bay unit, or pick the five-bay unit and add an expansion chassis later. For me, the four-bay DS-412+ met the sweet spot for performance and price.

(Note: This is not a review unit, and Synology wasn't involved in this review. This is a NAS that I bought with my own hard-earned dollars and which I've been using every day for several months—usually by watching an episode or two of "Grey's Anatomy" with my wife while we eat dinner, but also for more serious endeavors.)

Physicality

The DS-412+ is a relatively small device. It's roughly cubular (that's my word and I'm sticking to it) and all black with a fingerprint-attracting glossy finish on the removable drive bay cover. It has four drive bays with little plastic removable caddies in which you secure your disks for easy insertion and removal.

Enlarge/ The DS-412+ hard at work, balancing a small server on its head like some kind of chunky circus performer. The thing next to it is a UPS.

In addition to the four internal drives, the DS-412+ has USB 3 and eSATA ports for attaching additional drives, which can be used simply for extra external storage or which can be brought under the NAS's management and used to expand existing NAS volumes or add new ones.

The unit isn't especially heavy, and the noise level of the NAS itself is very low; its fans are quiet, and depending on the types of disks chosen, you could easily situate the NAS on or below your desk and never notice it. However, I've got it socked away in my closet because the disks I chose are quite loud; when the NAS is busy, I can hear them grinding away even through a closed door. This is my own fault, though, because I went with disks that prioritize reliability and performance over quiet operation. I made the right choice for me, but it may not be the right choice for you.

Choosing disks

To fill out the DS-412+, I picked up four 2TB Western Digital RE4-GP enterprise-class SATA disks. The choice to go with the more reliable enterprise-class drives was an easy one; I'd experienced probably one disk failure every three or four months with my DroboFS, which was populated with 2TB Western Digital Green disks. In addition to having a longer warranty, the RE4-GPs have better vibration tolerance (important when you have several disks packed into a small space) and, most important of all, default support for advanced error recovery control, or "Time Limited Error Recovery" in Western Digital parlance.

ERC/TLER is vitally important for any spinning disk drive used in a RAID set, because it controls the amount of time a hard disk drive controller waits when it encounters a read or write error before it reports the error to the host system and begins attempting to recover from it. Without ERC, a disk drive in a RAID set which runs into a bad sector on read could find itself dropped from the RAID set entirely by the RAID controller, which could in turn trigger a full RAID re-build to a hot spare (with the performance impact that incurs) or could simply leave the RAID set in a degraded state. With ERC, though, the RAID controller is given time to recover from small read and write errors by rebuilding the specific erroring tracks from the other disks, rather than having to rebuild the entire RAID set because it thinks the disk is bad. Single-sector errors and remaps are pretty common, and without a disk that supports ERC you run the risk of a tiny, easily recoverable error transforming into a system-impacting event. (Don't worry if all this talk about RAID is confusing—we'll briefly discuss what RAID is and how it applies in Synology-land in a moment.)

Enterprise-class drives might be overkill, however. I purchased the device in late April 2012, so at the time Western Digital hadn't yet released its WD Red NAS drives; if they had been available, I would likely have gone with them instead. They offer a good compromise between the reliability and extra firmware features of enterprise-class drives, and the lower cost of consumer-grade gear. There are of course other drive manufacturers out there besides Western Digital; while no one else has yet begun selling a hard disk drive marketed specifically for consumer and small business NAS devices like the WD Red, any disk drive which has a good warranty and supports ERC will make a fine choice.

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Lee_Ars

Great review, sums up my thoughts exactly. Have been using a Synology NAS for a couple of years now, and it is honestly the best device I have ever purchased outside of my computer. Incredibly useful and flexible, combined with that great speed. Very stable platform that has never given me any meaningful issues. Love it.

Excellent piece and exactly what I needed as I consider what to do with my pile of individual external hard drives long-term; a network-based solution that's more connector-agnostic (versus FW800, ThunderBolt, etc.) sounds like the right choice, and one that's as turn-key as this seems a no-brainer.

Looks like a really nice piece of gear, but the price is just too much for me to consider (£520 without drives in the UK). Halve it and maybe we have something to talk about, but I don't imagine that's very likely...

But Windows 8 doesn't support NAS devices for storage. Microsoft is really screwing up bigtime here, when you can't put your music on your NAS and have it play seamlessly.

What the hell are you talking about?

I have many of the same issues. We're talking about indexed locations, and having media show up in the 'media' folders, even when windows is 'told' that it should index that location.

My system is a 'frankenNAS' - well, it doesn't look like one (AMD Phenom II x 2, 4GB, 5x2TB WD drives in RAID5, one 160gb boot drive running FreeNAS in a nice Silverstone case with an Antec 700w power supply). Using the Win8 preview on my HTPC, I couldn't get the NAS to be recognized as an indexable location no matter what I tried.

Thus, every time in Win8 under the videos, it would show a nice little nag 'It's lonely here..." no matter what I tried to have it indexed.

Great review, sums up my thoughts exactly. Have been using a Synology NAS for a couple of years now, and it is honestly the best device I have ever purchased outside of my computer. Incredibly useful and flexible, combined with that great speed. Very stable platform that has never given me any meaningful issues. Love it.

Completely agree. I've used mine for some years now and to be honest I'm a bit jealous of the authors DS-412+ (grrrr).

I might add they update their DiskStation Management software quite a bit, and each time adding great new features. Rock solid as well.

What wasn't mentioned here is something I rely on a lot is their surveillance software and application. I've a couple Axis IP cameras at my house for security. It's a great cheap homebrew solution. The application is fully customizable and compares well with professional systems. I leave the house at 8:00 and someone enters my garage at 8:30 and I've got a message on my phone in under 30 seconds, complete with pictures. All recorded. Some models of cameras (I splurged) will turn on lights and broadcast a prerecorded statement that the intruder is being recorded, the video has already being uploaded so it's useless to destroy the camera, and to have a Nice Day!

The Synology "ezCloud" applet can't be stressed enough, although the author hit upon it many times. I have multiple, and I mean multiple, computers syncing important files back to my NAS at home. While Synology does support DDNS I have mine linked back through a dedicated domain name, which is easy to do with a bit of port forwarding. The tricky part is ports though (in the 6000 range I think without looking it up) so using it at a workplace with any IT infrastructure in place can be tough but worked around. I use BitVice Tunnelier and run on port 22 (which isn't normally locked) on our network to secure the use of that service.

I no nobody likes a FanBoi, but I really can't say how great these little Synology devices are in simplicity, power, and ease of use are.

Thanks for the tips on the enterprise class drives. I'm using two 2TB WD Greens in my current setup and I haven't had a hiccup in a the couple years I've used them. In planning my upgrade that's a real point to consider though (the RAID explanation that is). Thanks!

Bloody fast—able to saturate a gigabit Ethernet pipe with four disks, and probably with some head room still left

Honestly it's sad this actually counts as even mildly impressive to you, and I guess it goes to show how gimped you were by Drobo. Gigabit ethernet is mildly fast, but it's nothing special: a single modern hard drive can trivially saturate it for sequential access. Any sort of striping is just going to make it sillier. Saturating gigabit should be the bare minimum baseline. For comparison, onboard 3Gbps SATA is already obsolete.

That said, this part definitely applied:

Quote:

if you're that kind of person, you might have quit reading already and gone back to building your RAID-Z vdevs or whatever it is that you folks do. A huge segment of regular people, though, can't or don't want to deal with home-built servers.

I'd actually like to see Ars do an article on that, and I think you're using a fair amount of hyperbole in your expression of reliability. A quiet fileserver is not an OC'd water cooled hotrod, and in fact you can get those prebuilt as well if that's what floats your boat (ie., the FreeNAS mini or similar). For me ZFS alone is worth going elsewhere.

I'd like a home NAS box that can go into a power save mode, spinning down the discs and using very little electricity. (Although I'm not sure how low power these things can go and still maintain an active GbE connection.) Low power consumption at idle would be a primary consideration for me.

I've been happily running ZFS on my file server for years but have been considering a more mainstream solution. The only thing I can't give up with ZFS is the data integrity checking. It checksums everything and knows when data goes bad. Does this have any data integrity checking? For clarity (if you're not familiar with ZFS), mirroring doesn't solve this problem. If one disk has an error, pure mirroring doesn't help you (or preferably the NAS) distinguish which one is correct.

I've got a pair of Synology NAS boxes in use in corporate applications, and have been very happy with them. Pricing is higher, yes, but the raw speed more than makes up for it. Stupid easy to set up, the web interface is very user friendly, and it's very flexible.

Service is a bit wonky, with a serious lack of immediate support if there's an outage. They're selling "enterprise" boxes, but without the SLA you'd need to a mission critical deployment. If/when they get their act together on support, we'd consider them an alternative to the traditional SAN vendors for iSCSI or NFS VM storage.

if you're that kind of person, you might have quit reading already and gone back to building your RAID-Z vdevs or whatever it is that you folks do. A huge segment of regular people, though, can't or don't want to deal with home-built servers.

I'd actually like to see Ars do an article on that, and I think you're using a fair amount of hyperbole in your expression of reliability. A quiet fileserver is not an OC'd water cooled hotrod, and in fact you can get those prebuilt as well if that's what floats your boat (ie., the FreeNAS mini or similar). For me ZFS alone is worth going elsewhere.

I'm in the same position. I would like to have a NAS at home, but $650 for an empty case is just too much. An Ars guide to buildling your own NAS would be great. Whatever happened to those monthly/quarterly system builder guides?

I'd like a home NAS box that can go into a power save mode, spinning down the discs and using very little electricity. (Although I'm not sure how low power these things can go and still maintain an active GbE connection.) Low power consumption at idle would be a primary consideration for me.

I'd like a home NAS box that can go into a power save mode, spinning down the discs and using very little electricity. (Although I'm not sure how low power these things can go and still maintain an active GbE connection.) Low power consumption at idle would be a primary consideration for me.

My little Atom / Debian "frankenNAS" can be put into ACPI Standby mode; it spins down its single hard drive and listens for a Wake On Lan "magic packet". Uses 2-4 watts in this state. Only issue is I have to ssh into it to put it into such a state, and not everything that accesses it knows to send the magic packet and wait a bit before trying to access it. Additionally, it doesn't always bring the LAN interface back up when resuming from this state.

However, if you knew What The Hell You Were Doing and were trying to build a commercial product, you could probably make this work rather better - certainly the basic ability to enter a low power sleep mode exists.

The article covers this a bit. The 'Cloud Folder' resides on the NAS box, that you own, so you can assign any amount of space to it, up to the capacity of the array. Want to host 500GB of space, no problem. You also don't have to worry about a monthly fee (I'm not sure where free meets paid across the hosters but I don't really need to, as I'm hosting myself). Plus, you own the box and control rights to it, so your data (within reason) is more secure.

I put together a DS1511+ a few months ago and simply love it. We migrated off of the Dlink NAS. These are well built NAS units with outstanding GUI. I would agree, the prices aren't cheap, but I don't regret the purchase.

The article covers this a bit. The 'Cloud Folder' resides on the NAS box, that you own, so you can assign any amount of space to it, up to the capacity of the array. Want to host 500GB of space, no problem. You also don't have to worry about a monthly fee (I'm not sure where free meets paid across the hosters but I don't really need to, as I'm hosting myself). Plus, you own the box and control rights to it, so your data (within reason) is more secure.

but of course, check your Internet connection upload (!) speed first... With ADSL or so other "slow" upload speed connections you're not going to be thrilled by the "speed" you get when accessing the files in that "ezCloud" when you're away from home .

Having owned 2 Synology NAS for a few years now I have found the community app development sorely lacking. Most of those applications you see in the package center have been there for years and Synology padded it out by placing features that were part of the OS to begin with as apps.

There is a much more active community churning out interesting things around QNAP, Netgear hell even Thecus.

One other thing to watch out for if planning on using NFS with media players, you shouldn't really need to given how fast Samba is on them but Synology's NFS has an almost allergic reaction to any media player set top box with NFS like Dune, XBMC, Boxee, Popcornhour etc. so it's best avoided for that.

That said Synology absolutely crush the competition when it comes to ease of use and mobile app support.

I'd like a home NAS box that can go into a power save mode, spinning down the discs and using very little electricity. (Although I'm not sure how low power these things can go and still maintain an active GbE connection.) Low power consumption at idle would be a primary consideration for me.

Looks like another awesome home NAS for those who can afford it. I would definitely consider one of these when it comes time to replace my ReadNAS NV+. The readynas has been going strong for years. It has literally been flawless, requiring zero minutes of fiddling in more years than I can remember. Zero administration is a beautiful thing.

In that time period, it has saved me from 3 total drive failures and eased transitioning to multiple new computers. If you don't have a NAS that does timemachine already, go buy one immediately!

if you're that kind of person, you might have quit reading already and gone back to building your RAID-Z vdevs or whatever it is that you folks do. A huge segment of regular people, though, can't or don't want to deal with home-built servers.

I'd actually like to see Ars do an article on that, and I think you're using a fair amount of hyperbole in your expression of reliability. A quiet fileserver is not an OC'd water cooled hotrod, and in fact you can get those prebuilt as well if that's what floats your boat (ie., the FreeNAS mini or similar). For me ZFS alone is worth going elsewhere.

I'm in the same position. I would like to have a NAS at home, but $650 for an empty case is just too much. An Ars guide to buildling your own NAS would be great. Whatever happened to those monthly/quarterly system builder guides?

They have smaller boxes for 2 disk drives that are cheaper. Go to Amazon or Buy.com for prices.

Sorry, but I have trouble paying $650 for a NAS for my home. I leave my PCs on all the time as it is; plus I have a Windows Media Center PC. These things are business-focused, and I would never recommend a Synology device to a non-geek friend. Most would be far better off with a Time Capsule or even a Dropbox account. For home use, the Synology just has way too many features, and therefore costs way too much.

The niche that a device like this fits in is very small: uber-geeks with terabytes of media files (who already likely run a Media Server or something,) gigabit ethernet throughout their house who are also willing to drop $1000 on a disk system. Me? I just use Windows Media Center and a couple Xbox 360s. It's cheaper and has better reach.

The article covers this a bit. The 'Cloud Folder' resides on the NAS box, that you own, so you can assign any amount of space to it, up to the capacity of the array. Want to host 500GB of space, no problem. You also don't have to worry about a monthly fee (I'm not sure where free meets paid across the hosters but I don't really need to, as I'm hosting myself). Plus, you own the box and control rights to it, so your data (within reason) is more secure.

but of course, check your Internet connection upload (!) speed first... With ADSL or so other "slow" upload speed connections you're not going to be thrilled by the "speed" you get when accessing the files in that "ezCloud" when you're away from home .

Very true. I forgot about that, thanks.

/off topic somewhat: One of the reasons I really like the box actually lies outside the unit. Here in Chattanooga, TN I've been sitting on a low tier 50/50Mbps connection to my house (News: EPB in Chattanooga realized again how much bandwidth they are sitting on and upgraded all users... now a 100/100Mbps connection at no extra charge... F'ing Woot! FU Comcast). I can stream HD video to work if I want while operating the surveillance array all the while operating an impromptu FTP server. Also, these units will act as a BT device if that's your cup of tea. Extra external bandwidth helps these babys shine.

The article covers this a bit. The 'Cloud Folder' resides on the NAS box, that you own, so you can assign any amount of space to it, up to the capacity of the array. Want to host 500GB of space, no problem. You also don't have to worry about a monthly fee (I'm not sure where free meets paid across the hosters but I don't really need to, as I'm hosting myself). Plus, you own the box and control rights to it, so your data (within reason) is more secure.

I ment that MS Skydrive has an option to allow access to files stored locally on your PC via the internet. Potentially, this could be used to access any NAS box.

Sorry, but I have trouble paying $650 for a NAS for my home. I leave my PCs on all the time as it is; plus I have a Windows Media Center PC. These things are business-focused, and I would never recommend a Synology device to a non-geek friend. Most would be far better off with a Time Capsule or even a Dropbox account. For home use, the Synology just has way too many features, and therefore costs way too much.

The niche that a device like this fits in is very small: uber-geeks with terabytes of media files (who already likely run a Media Server or something,) gigabit ethernet throughout their house who are also willing to drop $1000 on a disk system. Me? I just use Windows Media Center and a couple Xbox 360s. It's cheaper and has better reach.

I might respectfully disagree as it appears, and I don't mean this poorly, that you aren't familiar with Synology's products. For instance, the authors box is a four bay business class unit. If someone wanted a cheap solution they could go for the 2 bay (minimum for RAID mirroring if redundancy is an issue). A 212J fits that bill and can be found for $200 and some change. That's about a third of the price of the reviewed unit. Cool thing is, the software that drives these as the same across all units, so while you might loose some space and horsepower, you don't really loose out on functionality. Mine is a 210J and I use it as a cloudstation box, an FTP server, a surveillance hub with two cameras, in iTunes server, host a web site, and a couple other things. For a $200+ turnkey solution (sans disks, which is cool since I wanted a particular set) it's a pretty good deal.

I'd like a home NAS box that can go into a power save mode, spinning down the discs and using very little electricity. (Although I'm not sure how low power these things can go and still maintain an active GbE connection.) Low power consumption at idle would be a primary consideration for me.

You can set a Syno box to spin down the drives after a period of inactivity ranging from 10 minutes to 5 hours. At idle this drops the power draw from 44w to 15w on a DS-412+.

I might respectfully disagree as it appears, and I don't mean this poorly, that you aren't familiar with Synology's products. For instance, the authors box is a four bay business class unit. If someone wanted a cheap solution they could go for the 2 bay (minimum for RAID mirroring if redundancy is an issue). A 212J fits that bill and can be found for $200 and some change. That's about a third of the price of the reviewed unit. Cool thing is, the software that drives these as the same across all units, so while you might loose some space and horsepower, you don't really loose out on functionality. Mine is a 210J and I use it as a cloudstation box, an FTP server, a surveillance hub with two cameras, in iTunes server, host a web site, and a couple other things. For a $200+ turnkey solution (sans disks, which is cool since I wanted a particular set) it's a pretty good deal.

I poorly stated my point; actually I was more quibbling with the fact that the author reviewed a $650 business class NAS device as a home NAS. I am familiar with Synology's products; and I still find $200 too much to spend for a NAS with no disks in a home environment. I own a NAS (well, a Time Capsule, which has its own additional benefit of being a wifi router and Time Machine target) but I almost never use it as a NAS -- Dropbox is just too damn convenient and works on every device I own.

But Windows 8 doesn't support NAS devices for storage. Microsoft is really screwing up bigtime here, when you can't put your music on your NAS and have it play seamlessly.

What the hell are you talking about?

I have many of the same issues. We're talking about indexed locations, and having media show up in the 'media' folders, even when windows is 'told' that it should index that location.

My system is a 'frankenNAS' - well, it doesn't look like one (AMD Phenom II x 2, 4GB, 5x2TB WD drives in RAID5, one 160gb boot drive running FreeNAS in a nice Silverstone case with an Antec 700w power supply). Using the Win8 preview on my HTPC, I couldn't get the NAS to be recognized as an indexable location no matter what I tried.

Thus, every time in Win8 under the videos, it would show a nice little nag 'It's lonely here..." no matter what I tried to have it indexed.

I hate this too. Windows 7 and 8 expects the server to be running some variation of Windows Search. Of course, this means your server has to be a Windows one. There is no longer an option to index network shares locally.

However, I forced added a Mac network share to my Music Library (Library as in the OS feature) using Win7 Library Tool. Zune and the Windows 8 Music app both pickup music on my non-Windows server once it's forced in with Win7 Library Tool.

I've been using a QNAP 509 for years, and it's been awesome. I particularly love using iSCSI as storage for my desktop machines, combined with a boot SSD. No spinning disks, and the iSCSI drive tends to outperform a single local HD.

I built my own servers for years, but after switching to the QNAP, I'd never go back to the hassle of building and caring for my own again.

If you are going to buy one of these units, stick to the ones that have an x86 in them. Anything else is so slow as to be not useful. Write speeds on RAID5/RAID6 should be fast, dangit!

I think the biggest problem people have with home-built NAS solutions is using junk-grade hardware to save money. You want your long-term storage to be long-term reliable and a five year old PC, while having enough processing power, wasn't built with longevity in mind.

Also, please remember that RAID is not a backup solution. It's a high-availability solution.